Kevin Roberts writes:

The Winter edition of the ReSource Newsletter will give you a small glimpse into the work we have been doing at ReSource in recent months, along with some initial feedback on the ReSource Future process from Christopher, an article about the Filling Station Trust, a book review and a Pentecost story. I hope that you enjoy reading it. The prayer diary for the next quarter can also be found above, with prayer-pointers for each day.

I would be particularly grateful for your prayers as the Trustees meet at the end of January 2018 to consider the ReSource Future Report. The conversations that we have had over the last four months have been extensive and wonderfully encouraging, and from these we hope to discern a clear direction under God for the charity’s work in the years ahead, for the church’s deepening engagement with the person and work of the Holy Spirit. You will see from my front page article that something good looks to be emerging! Please pray that we will catch the wind of the Spirit’s guidance, and go where He wants us to go, no more and no less.

For now, though, can I extend to you my very best wishes for Christmas and assure you of our regular prayers for you here in the Wells office.

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

Thank you for your prayers and support over these last few busy weeks, in which the ReSource Future process has been in top gear alongside a full diary of regular work and speaking engagements. It has been an exhilarating autumn so far, and we thank God for His hand upon our work, and for the opportunities we have had to speak to a wide range of people about our future. Please do continue praying for us. We so need it and appreciate it as the essential underpinning of all that we do.

ReSource Future

Thank you to all those who completed the ReSource Future questionnaire earlier in the summer and to Peter Brierley who has collated the results for us in a thorough and very helpful Report, now available on the ReSource website. We have also now held eight ReSource Future Evenings around the country and met over 250 of you at these, each of which was thoroughly worthwhile, and has given us much to ponder and pray about for our future.

Added to these larger gatherings Christopher and I have met individually with a range of church leaders from the mainstream denominations and with the leadership of partner organisations, including SOMA UK, New Wine, CPAS, the Filling Station and Emmaus Leadership, and we look forward to further conversations through to early December. We would particularly value your prayers for two focus-group gatherings at Harnhill (on 6 November) and Foxhill (on 15th), and for the Discernment Group as we meet residentially at Whalley Abbey 30 November - 1 December to pray and reflect on all that we have been hearing. Christopher’s draft Report will go to the Discernment Group on 16 January 2018, before being considered by the Trustees in a residential meeting at Launde Abbey over 30-31 January. Some strong themes are already emerging, all of which feel good, positive and exciting. It doesn’t look as though God has finished with us yet!

My ReSource Future Evening talk on ‘the God who Guides’ from Acts 16:6-10 is now on our website. Click here to listen. You may also be interested in the short summary I did on ReSource’s story, click here.

Church Weekends

ReSource has been asked to facilitate a number of events over the past two months, including five Church Weekends, four residentially and one for the Ely and Newmarket Methodist Circuit ‘at home’. I am very grateful to Garrie and Jill Griffiths who led a ReSource weekend at High Leigh for Christchurch & St Mary Billericay, and to Philip and Jacqui Dorling who led a weekend for St Stephen’s, Preston at Abbot Hall. Thanks too to my wife Anne who joined me to lead the Ely weekend, along with those for St Luke’s West Kilburn at High Leigh and the Kidderminster East Team Ministry at the Whitemoor Lakes Centre near Lichfield. There will be more about these in the Winter Newsletter which will be with you before the end of the year. And we are delighted at the engagements booked already for next year. Please do be in touch if you think that a ReSource speaker might be right for your church weekend, renewal day, retreat day or mission event next year and I will be very happy to talk this through with you.

ReSource Database

You may be aware that existing data protection legislation will be replaced on 25 May 2018 by the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which will introduce new requirements for how organisations, including charities, process personal data. ReSource is fully compliant with existing legislation and has a secure database of supporter information. We take seriously our responsibilities as holders of personal data and have secure systems to ensure that it is kept strictly private. We never, under any circumstances, give these details to another charity, company or individual enquirer and have never given consent to other charitable Trusts to use this information for their own marketing purposes or private communications. The Trustees and staff are preparing for the introduction of the new legislation, and will be in touch with all those on our current database early in 2018 to explain the consent now required should you wish to continue (which we hope you will!) to be on our supporter database.

Once again, thank you for your love, support and prayer. If we can ever pray for you or your church do please let me know and we will be very pleased to include you in our prayers when we gather at 2.00pm each day in the Wells office.

Kevin Roberts writes

Thank you to all those who have contributed articles to the Newsletter, and our congratulations to one of our contributors, Fr Steven Benford, on his recent election to be the next Bishop of Dunedin in New Zealand. This is great news.

The ReSource Future process is taking shape for the autumn, and Christopher Landau gives more details about this in the Newsletter. Can I particularly draw your attention to:

Kevin Roberts writes:

I am delighted to send you the autumn editions of the ReSource Newsletter and Prayer Letter, both here attached, which I hope you will enjoy reading and using. It has been a pleasure in these last few months to be involved in a variety of church weekends, renewal days and retreats, and to be working alongside leaders in a variety of denominations and we have tried to give you a partial snapshot of this in the Newsletter. If reading it prompts you to think whether ReSource staff or associates might help you in similar ways into the months ahead, please be in touch and I would love to talk it through with you.

We are also at the moment deeply engaged in praying and thinking about God’s mandate for our future, and you will see something of the scale and detail of this from the entries in the Prayer Diary, with more conversations yet to be finalised. I would covet your ongoing prayers, please, for Christopher and myself, the discernment group and the Trustees as we travel around the country and meet with a whole variety of people, that in it all we might hear clearly what God is saying to us and asking of us for the deeper engagement of the church with the life and work of the Holy Spirit.

It has been a great pleasure to meet some of you at the first five ReSource Future Evenings and I look forward to seeing others of you at the remaining three. Full details of these can be found on our website by clicking the links below:

Kevin Roberts writes

With Spring in the air and with Easter in view it seems appropriate that our focus over these coming months will be on God’s plans for our future.

We are entering the ReSource Future process with an increasing confidence that God still has work for us to do, but we want to consciously seek Him for a fresh mandate and for a greater clarity about the focus of our ministry. We also want to listen carefully to our supporters, to church leaders and to partner organisations so that we can discern what seems good “to the Holy Spirit and to us”, and move together into God’s “new thing” for ReSource, whatever that might be.

As Graham Cray points out in his helpful article in this Newsletter “discernment is a fundamentally corporate or communal activity”. We shall be in contact with supporters after Easter to offer a variety of ways in which you can contribute to the ReSource Future process.